Order and timing of commands problem

In my loop function I have a tag called "cleartags" which automatically clears everyone's tags each tick.
I have a few functions that go "add cleartags" and then "remove cleartags" followed by adding every tag i want the person who executed that function to have, however this ends up not actually clearing their previous tags before adding the new ones. I tried to add a delay, but then the player ends up with no tags at all. Does anyone know how to achieve what I'm looking for?